Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

"If he gets the rest of them clothes off, we'll never catch him in a thousand years." -Constable Jaffers Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) has been doing experiments on himself and finally succeeded in turning himself invisible.  He starts working on an antidote, but a side-effect of his experiments cause Griffin to go insane.  As Jack goes off on a murdering spree, the police do everything in their power to stop them, but will it be enough?  Jack has threatened to murder an old colleague.  Will they be able to catch him before he can follow through? What Works: The Invisible Man succeeds largely because of the performance of Claude Rains.  His screen presence is palpable even when he is invisible.  He has a distinct and memorable voice and is very menacing.  He frequently threatens murder and has no problem following through.  Though a lot of the performances is voice-over, Rains does a great job and gives us a delightfully villainous protagonist.

"If you die, can I have all your worldly possessions?" -Flem Above the clouds, on top of massive mountain, a group of yetis live in peace and harmony believing there is nothing more to the world apart from their mountaintop.  One day, Migo (Channing Tatum) witnesses a plane crash and has a brief encounter with a supposedly mythical creature, a smallfoot.  All of the evidences is knocked of the side of the mountain before anyone else can see it and when Migo continues to try and convince everyone of the smallfoot's existence, he is banished by their leader, Stonekeeper (Common), who doesn't like anyone questioning his rules.  Migo decides to descend below the clouds to find proof of the existence of the smallfoot, prove Stonekeeper wrong, and reverse his banishment. What Works: Smallfoot is a kids' movie and I think it's important for kids' movies to have a message and Smallfoot has a great one.  The ultimate takeaway is to question

"You came here to be scared, right?" -Security Guard A group of college students get tickets to a massive horror festival, Hell Fest, full of mazes, scares, and mayhem.  Natalie (Amy Forsyth) has a strange run-in with a masked figure during one of the haunted mazes.  As the night goes on, Natalie begins to see the figure over and over again.  As her friends start to go missing, Natalie starts to suspects that some of the scares might be for real. There will be spoilers ahead, but I recommend this movie for people who like slasher movies and Halloween films.  Everyone else probably won't get much out of Hell Fest , but I enjoyed it for what it was. What Works: Hell Fest really feels like a throwback to gimmicky 80's-slasher movies and I really appreciated that. It delivers on it's promise of being a slasher movie set in haunted houses and gives us plenty of fun sequences in spook-houses.  It made we want to go through some haunted houses

"No!  You shot the wrong one!" -Mr. Mackey Season 22's premiere episode didn't pull any punches with one of the single darkest episodes of South Park .  The school is plagued by frequent shootings, but no one besides Sharon Marsh seems to care.  The rest of the town just thinks she's being hormonal.  Meanwhile, Token is refusing to let Cartman cheat off him, so Cartman is forced to dig up some dirt on Token involving the movie Black Panther. What Works: I had been wondering for awhile if South Park was ever going to do an episode on school shootings and I've had a few ideas on how they could do it, but they surprised me in a brilliant way by putting the shootings in the background of the episode.  It's a genius move and some pretty damning criticism of our society and left us with something absurdly dark, yet hysterically funny.  The best parts being Cartman and Token dodging bullets while Butters covered them as well as Mr. Mackey runni

"We're going to lose an artery to our heart." -Pat Cusack Survivor: David vs. Goliath kicked off with a solid season premiere even if the ending was a major downer.  Because we never went to Tribal Council, there isn't a ton of strategy to unpack here, but we did get some great character moments throughout the episode.  I really like this cast and the first episode was a promising start.  Now let's take a look at how each of our players did and find out who has got it going on. Who Played Well: Let's start over on the David tribe.  First we have both Christian and Lyrsa who were chosen to compete in the opening reward challenge.  I think they made the best possible choices they could have made and Christian slayed that puzzle.  They did a great job and gave themselves a great first impression for their tribe.  Plus, we saw both of them form a solid bond with another member of their tribe.  Christian with Gabby and Lyrsa with Elizabeth. 

"Get out!" -The House George and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder) move into a new house with their three kids.  The house is very large and should be way out of their price range, but because one year prior a man killed his entire family in the house, George and Kathy got a good deal.  As they start to settle in, the family begins to notice strange occurrences.  Some people get sick if they go inside the house, strange noises occur, the dog behaves erratically, but worst of all, George begins acting different.  He is much more angry, seems to be on the brink of sanity, and has taken to chopping wood with alarming frequency.  Kathy has to save her family from the house, but will she be able to save George, or is he too far gone? What Works: The performances of all three main actors are excellent.  Josh Brolin has some really great range.  He starts off as a loving step-father who just wants his step-kids to start calling him Dad, but as the movi

With the Recent release of The Predator , I decided to go back and watch all of the movies in the series so I could do a ranking of them all.  Brace yourself, there may be a few surprises up ahead.  We'll start with the worst film in the series and work our way to the top. #6. The Predator (2018) The newest film in the series comes in dead last and it isn't even close.  This is the only film in the series I would consider outright bad.  It has a few funny moments and some solid action and kills.  Plus including Jake Busey in the film is a nice nod to Gary Busey being in the second, but the characters suck.  They are all pretty much comic relief (and bad comic relief at that), which doesn't work in a sci-fi/action film.  We don't even spend much time with the Predator itself.  Instead, we're stuck with a bunch of irritating characters.  There are parts where the CGI doesn't look very good, which just isn't acceptable in a big budget movie these day

"I'm ready to die.  Are you?" -Mombasa Royce (Adrien Brody), a mercenary, finds himself in an jungle on an alien world along with a group of soldiers, criminals, and killers, as well as an out-of-place doctor (Topher Grace).  The motley crew quickly realizes they are being hunted by a group of aliens, and they are much bigger than anything we've seen before. What Works: Adrien Brody is a solid lead in this movie.  We don't ever learn much about his character, but I like how cold he is and how easily he can make the tough calls.  Royce is a survivor and it's pretty refreshing to have a character like this.  Royce isn't really a good guy, but he's so smart that you can't help but root for him. A few of the supporting cast members stand out as well.  I love Walton Goggins in everything I've ever seen him in and he's very enjoyable here.  He's both comic relief and the wild card of the group and easily the most un

"There's a clock in the walls.  We don't know what it does except...something horrible." -Jonathan Barnavelt After the death of his parents, 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) is sent to live with his uncle, Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black), who he has never met.  Both Jonathan and his house are very odd as there are clocks everywhere and Lewis frequently sees his uncle wandering the house at night listening for something in the walls.  Lewis discovers that Jonathan is actually a warlock and begins studying magic himself, but he must learn quickly.  The previous owner of the house, Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), is returning and has something evil up his sleeve. What Works: I was really interested in this film because it's a kids movie directed by Eli Roth who directed gore-fests like Cabin Fever and Hostel .  One thing that Roth manages to get right is the atmosphere.  This film really feels like a Halloween movie with lots of spooky imagery. 

"How does something like that happen? -Charlie Pace I recently finished watching all of Fargo and was trying to decide what to watch next and settled on re-watching my favorite show of all time... Lost.  While I was watching the pilot, I realized it was September 22nd, the 14th anniversary of the crash of Oceanic 815.  I took it as a sign, to not only re-watch my favorite show, but to write about every episode.  So, won't you join my on a journey...back to the island of mystery and mayhem? The first episode of Lost introduces us to Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), who wakes up in the middle of the jungle.  He wanders to the beach where he finds what's left of the plane he was on.  Jack immediately throws himself into helping the survivors, including the very pregnant Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin).  He also manages to save the life of Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell). Once the chaos of the initial crash settles, Jack tends to his own injuries

"At some level, food knows it's food." -V. M. Varga The finale of the 3rd season of Fargo picks up with Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) signing documents for V. M. Varga (David Thewlis).  When Varga insults Emmit, he steals a gun and threatens to start shooting, but Varga distracts him long enough for Meemo (Andy Yu) to knock him out.  Later, Emmit returns to his company only to find Ruby Goldfarb (Mary McDonnell) bought it from Varga and has taken over leaving Emmit with tons of debt, but a secret fortune hidden in an off-shore account. Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) is on the verge of resigning from the police force, but a call from Larue Dollard (Hamish Linklater) of the IRS stops her.  He brings Gloria in on his case and learns that Varga is the one behind everything and is the man she needs to get. Varga takes Meemo and a group of men to settle with Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who lures them to a storage facility.  It turns out to be a trap

"You're too stupid to talk, Dale." -Dallas Howard Picking up where the previous film left off, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem shows us the birth of the Predalien, a hybrid of the two species that causes the Predator's ship to crash on Earth near a town in the mountains of Colorado.  As people begin disappearing, recently released felon, Dallas Howard (Steven Pasquale), and solider Kelly O'Brien (Reiko Aylesworth) have to team up to protect their friends and families from the infestation of Xenomorphs.  A lone Predator arrives to try and clean up the mess, but quickly finds himself in the fight of his life as Earth itself becomes threatened by widespread infestation. Before I get into Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, I need to set up the context of this review.  When I first watched this movie, I had heard nothing but bad things about it.  It has an 11% on rotten tomatoes and just a terrible reputation.  But as I watched it, I found myself really enjoying

"Oh, you don't want to be friends with me, trust me." -Emily Nelson Single super-mom, Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) meets the mother of her son's best friend, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), who likes to drink, has a demanding job, and isn't much of a hands-on mother.  The two have hardly any anything in common, but quickly become good friends.  Several weeks later, Emily vanishes without a trace leaving her husband, Sean (Henry Golding) and Stephanie with a mystery on their hands.  As they investigate what happened to Emily, they quickly realize they didn't know her as well as they thought. What Works: A Simple Favor works because of the performances of all three leads.  Anna Kendrick is fanatic as the awkward and naive Stephanie.  She has tons of really funny moments and is very sweet, but has an edge to her that she doesn't even realize she has.  Blake Lively is endlessly entertaining, extremely enigmatic, and unbelievably chari

"Trucks don't drive by themselves." -Thad Timmy In the rural town of Lunar, Nevada, which is just a auto garage, a motel, and a diner, a group of people become trapped when all of the truck mysteriously come to life and begin killing humans.  Now, mechanic, Ray Porter (Timothy Busfield), has to find a way to fight back to protect his son and friends from the murderous machines. Trucks is the second film based on the Stephen King short story of the same name.  The first was called Maximum Overdrive, which is the only film ever directed by King.  I'd say Trucks is the superior film, but that doesn't say much.  This one is more competently made, but, due to the low budget and the made-for-TV quality, it is less entertaining. What Works: First off, some of the stunts done with the trucks are good.  We don't get a lot of them, and they aren't all good, but there are some nice ones with some great explosions. Our protagonist, Ray,